How work helped me overcome personal tragedyI’VE LONG BELIEVED that we have to take ourwhole selves to work, as I wrote in Lean In.

Because it’s just not the case that we’re
professional people during the day and
emotional people at night and on weekends. Then when I lost my husband suddenly, I had no choice but to take myself to
work—but I couldn’t get through a meeting
in the very early days without tearing up.

I feel so lucky. My boss, Mark Zuckerberg,
didn’t just give me the time o; I needed—
and that’s something I think is really
important for businesses to do—but he
also built me back up. When I thought I
couldn’t do my job, he was the one who
said, “No, I think you made a good point in
that meeting.” And so he helped me, both
by acknowledging the pain I was in and by
telling me he still believed in me.

I know that so many colleagues havefaced hard things. And I think whenwe are there for one another—not pre-tending hard things aren’t happening, butacknowledging them and supporting oneanother explicitly—we build better com-munities, better companies, better work-places. We need one another. I never couldhave gotten through this—and I’m stillgetting through this—without relying heav-ily on my colleagues and friends every day.

I’m hoping that Option B can help breakopen conversations so we can be more ofour authentic selves in the workplace.

What I’ve learned is that we don’t have
a fixed amount of resilience. Resilience is
like a muscle we build, but we don’t only
build it in ourselves. We also build it in
one another, by acknowledging the pain
people are going through and by being
there for one another.

By early 2015, Sheryl
Sandberg seemed to
have it all: a powerful role as the chief
operating o;cer of
Facebook; an in;uen-tial voice for women
in corporate America
as the author of

Lean In; and a happy,supportive family.

Then her husband,
SurveyMonkey CEO
Dave Goldberg, died
suddenly while on
vacation. Devastated,
Sandberg started
publicly chronicling
her grief and her
family’s struggle
to resume life a;er
loss. Her widely
shared Facebook
post, published 30

days a;er Goldberg’s
death, turned into
this spring’s Option
B: Facing Adversity,
Building Resilience,
and Finding Joy,
which Sandberg
co-wrote with
Wharton professor
Adam Grant. “I’m
still getting through
this,” she says
now–but she’s
also sharing what
she’s learned.

–As told to Maria
Aspan

FAMILY
CIRCLE

“Long before
Dave died, I
had learned
that parenting
was the most
humbling job
in the world—
and now I had
to relearn
how to do it
alone,” Sheryl
Sandberg
writes in

Welcome to Coverleaf. We hope you are enjoying your digital issue of .
Want to continue receiving your FREE digital companion issue?
Click the "Get More Issues!" button below and we will deliver your
digital companion directly to your inbox for the term of your print
subscription.